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Published: March 21st 2018
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18 Birds! at least Some
We arrived in Mayaka River State Park after a lovely ride through some of Florida back country. Orange groves with that smell of orange blossoms, cattle ranches and lots of "old Florida". What a refreshing change.
It was pleasing to see we had a nice large site quite close to the restrooms with lots of shade. The whole campground is in an old oak forest with the trees towering over us. There are palm trees mixed in and the ground cover is palmetto palms. Pictures.
Camp was set up in about an hour and dispite the fact that I was tired Watson really needed a walk so we hiked up the road til there was a glimpse of the lake. We sat on an old tree limb, Watson sits up there with me, and watched the sight=seeing air boat coming back from the upper part of the lake. We walked up a little further til there was a small path right to the lake where we saw racoon and deer tracks in the mud. Pictures.
When we got back to camp I was exhausted from the heat, 80s, and the day's activities
so I sat in my launge chair, watched the spanish moss in the trees, then read my book for a while.
Monday the 19th after a very long walk I left Watson in the camper and went to see if I could find some critters to photograph. The bridge had some gators but they were far away, no birds, so I went to the bird walk which is over the water sometimes. The water level varies a lot here and right now there is a draught in FL so the water is low. Way out on the other side of the lake was a bald eagle with an immature just hanging out together. As I watched it became clear that this was a flying and how to feed yourself lesson for the fledgeling. Every now and then the adult would fly over to the youngster and pester him til he took off then they swooped and glided together with the adult always pushing. The kid landed and grabbed on to a large stick almost looking like he was going to take off with it. Then he went into the water with his feet first maybe trying to catch a
fish, no luck though.
I had my big lense with me so got a few not so great pictures but you can get the idea of what they were doing. I really enjoyed watching them for almost 1 1/2 hrs. Talked to some people who were there and we compared notes on what we had seen so far.
Today the 20th was much the same only with a sped up timetable because the weather forcast was for very nasty storms about 4 in the afternoon. The wind was blowing about 20 mph so I didn't really expect to see many birds and that was indeed the case. I did find a few at the bridge, the only pictures from today.
The wind blew everything that wasn't tied down and stripped most dead leaves from the trees and some new fragile branches. There is debris all over. Finally at 6 the weather service terminated the tornado warnings and except for the wind and 8 drops of rain we were home free.
This storm is the tail end of the storm that is going to form off the east coast and produce the 4th nor'easter in as many
weeks. Sure glad I'm here.
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